Cemeteries

Note: any church within an urban environment may have had its
graveyard closed after the Burial Act of 1853. Any new church built
after that is unlikely to have had a graveyard at all.

Church History

This Place of Worship was founded in the 13th century, and we understand it is still open.

Kelly's Directory of 1923 describes Aston Somerville as a village and parish, 2½ miles east from Hinton station on the Ashchurch and Evesham branch of the Midland railway, and 5 south from Evesham. The church of St Mary was said to be "a building of stone in the Norman and Traditional styles, consisting of chancel, nave, north porch, and an embattled western tower, with crocketed pinnacles, containing a clock and 2 bells". Inside, on the floor of the church, is an ancient recumbent stone effigy of a knight in armour, supposed to represent one of the Somervilles. There is a medieval carved oak chancel screen, mural monuments to the Somerville, Head and Crowther families, and at the west end an ancient slab re-used and inscribed to Benjamin Parry, of London, goldsmith, d.1785. The parish records date from 1660.

Aston Somerville is a small parish, reflected in number of parishioners attending services at the time of the Religious Census of 1851 (HO 129/389/1/4/6). The Church had 96 sittings, with an average attendance of 18 at morning services, and 33 in the afternoon (including Sunday Scholars). There was no evening service. The return was completed by the Rector, George Head, who gave his address as "Aston Somerville, Evesham". Nevertheless it is now a Grade I Listed Building - for which the
British Listed Buildings website provides the additional detail that it dates from the 13th century. Their account also mentions a marble cartouche in the chancel, with cherubs' heads, a skull and shield of arms, to Mrs. Rebeca Parry (d.1704), and John Parry (d.1714); and an octagonal font, carved with ropework and other decoration "and appears to be re-tooled, possibly made from a re-used piece of stone".

The parish is bordered on the east by Childs Wickham and Buckland, and on the west by the River Isbourne, and the parishes of Hinton on the Green, and Sedgeberrow. It was transferred from Gloucestershire to Worcestershire in 1931, but remains in Gloucester Diocese.

Denomination

Now or formerly Church of England.

If more than one congregation has worshipped here,
or its congregation has united with others, in most cases this
will record its original dedication.

Maps

This Church is located at OS grid reference SP0474237865. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

www.magic.gov.uk (Modern Maps with various overlays)
Zoom out to 1:100000 to see County boundaries, and 1:500000 to show Parish Boundaries.

Reference

Places recorded by the Registrar
General under the provisions of the Places of Worship
Registration Act 1855 (2010) is available as a
"Freedom of Information" document from the website
What Do They Know.

You can specify either a Place, or OS Grid Reference to
search for. When you specify a Place, only entries for that place
will be returned, with Places of Worship listed in alphabetical
order. If you specify a Grid Reference, Places of Worship in the
immediate vicinity will be listed, in order of distance from the Grid
Reference supplied. The default is to list 10, but you can specify
How Many you want to see, up to a maximum of 100.

You can further refine your search by supplying other search terms.

You can specify entries with ('Yes') or without ('No') photographs.

You can specify a church or chapel's Dedication, to restrict entries to
those containing the term you supply as a dedication. So for instance, 'John'
would return 'St John', 'St Mary and St John', 'St John the Divine' &c.

You can specify a Street address, and likewise 'George' will return
George Place, St George's Street, George and Dragon, &c.

You can restrict the search to classes of Denomination. The exact denomination
is always shown in the results, although the search is for broad types. So you
can search for 'Methodist', but not 'Wesleyan Methodist' or 'Primitive Methodist'.
'Multi-denominational' includes Ecumenical Partnerships, and
'Other' means anything not covered by other broad classes.

Please note the above provides a search of selected fields in
the Gloucestershire section of the Places of Worship
Database on this site (churchdb.gukutils.org.uk) only.
For other counties, or for a full search of the Database, you might
like to try the site's
Google Custom Search, which includes full webpage content.

Further Information

This site provides historical information about churches, other places
of worship and cemeteries. It has no affiliation with the churches or
congregations themselves, nor is it intended to provide a means to find
places of worship in the present day.

For current information you should contact the place of worship directly via their website.